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Siren's swan song?

16 February 2002

By Fred Pearce

WHAT hope for the mermaid? The first ever global study of the
dugong—the creature that fuelled ancient seafarers’ fevered fantasies
about mermaids—concludes that it is the most spectacular casualty of the
worldwide destruction of coastal ecosystems.

Nobody knows how many of the secretive creatures still survive. But they seem
to be disappearing or extinct in most of the 37 tropical countries that have
been home to the dugong in recent times, says Helene Marsh of James Cook
University in Townsville, Australia. This week she published a report on dugong
numbers for the United Nations Environment …